Saint Lucia - Save the Pitons !

To the Honourable Prime Minister

As members of the Saint Lucia National Trust, as “sons and daughters of Saint Lucia”, as Saint Lucia friends, we are deeply concerned and ashamed about the possibility that the Pitons Management Area (PMA) may lose its World Heritage Site status through the failure of the Government of Saint Lucia to comply with its part of the agreement with UNESCO.

The Pitons are intrinsic to Saint Lucia's national pride and identity. We call on the Government of Saint Lucia, acting on our behalf, to comply with the requests of the World Heritage Committee included in Paragraphs 6 to 8 of Decision 33COM 7B.39 (reproduced below) with the greatest possible urgency and certainly before 1st February 2010.

“6. Requests the State Party to urgently re-establish and maintain a moratorium on development decisions within or affecting the property, to allow a reconsideration by the State Party of the level of development foreseen in the IDP and for effective systems for protection and management of the property to be put in place, and to complete the previously requested baseline assessment of land use in the property;
7. Also requests the State Party to invite a joint World Heritage Centre / IUCN reactive monitoring mission to the property to assess its current state of conservation and the effectiveness of its protection, planning and management, including from development within and outside its boundaries;
8. Also requests the State Party to submit to the World Heritage Centre, by 1 February 2010, a report on the state of conservation of the property and on the steps taken to respond to the concerns listed above, for examination by the World Heritage Committee at its 34th session in 2010.”
http://whc.unesco.org/en/decisions/1831

Saint Lucia National Trust members

http://save-stlucia-pitons.blogspot.com